Mikveh מקווה
A pool of natural water effecting the passage from ritual impurity to purity.
A mikveh is not washing but a change of status. Its requirements are exact: at least forty se'ah of water that arrived naturally—rain, spring or melted snow—and was never carried in a vessel. Immersion must be total, with nothing intervening between body and water.
In Temple times it touched nearly everyone: without it one could not eat of the offerings, enter the Temple Mount or serve as a kohen. After the destruction the central area became the laws of family purity, along with immersing vessels bought from a non-Jew and immersion at conversion, one of the three conditions of joining the people.
Communities built a mikveh before a synagogue. Archaeologists find them by the dozen at Masada, at Qumran and beside the Temple Mount steps.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Vayikra 11:36 — “a spring and a cistern” — the root of the law of living water
- Vayikra 15 — the purifications that require immersion
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Mishnah Mikvaot 1–10 — the whole tractate on the construction of a mikveh
- Yevamot 46b — immersion on entering the Jewish people
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 198–201 — the practical laws
Basis: tradition.